The Meaning of Life is
by Thrice Seven Once Eleven
Summary: Slash. Aziraphale is good at his job. He realizes something, and reacts badly.  Crowley has something to hide.  It's quite possible that the two somethings are related.
1. Chapter 1

[A/N] I'm not sure how I feel about this fic. I kind of like it, and I kind of hate it, and it is unbetaed and I never really planned to put it up anywhere but you know how it is. I have the first two chapters done and there will be more, I promise. This fic runs with my personal canon, so this chapter (and following ones, too, in all probability) contains references to other fics.

Anyway, I feel like this could be better but I can't think how to do it, and I always think my fics could be better, so here you go. This one is slashy. And T for profanity.

Aziraphale and Crowley are not mine; they belong to Pratchett and Gaiman.

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**The Meaning of Life is -**

A large part of Aziraphale's job was to teach love, and he was good at it. He loved everyone, everything, with a calmly burning intensity that had given more than one human pause over the millennia.

This is not to say that he was perfect. He was wrathful at times, and irritable, and could be unthinking and cruel. But he never stopped loving.

Earth was different from Heaven. Heaven was beautiful, clean and cool and unchanging, a place of contentment and calmness. But _Earth_ was seething and alive, something that Heaven was not, and Earth was full of beauty of a different sort – moonlight reflecting off of dancing water, sunlight refracting down through atmosphere and oceans in lazy golden shafts, birdsong and streams and wind in the trees blowing warm through his hair. Snow and ice on the high mountains, shining white and scarlet. And there was rain, which Aziraphale was very fond of. Heaven had never seen rain.

Earth was full of pain, as well. The living creatures struggled mindlessly for survival against odds that sometimes seemed insurmountable. There was starvation, and war, and hatred. There were tornados and hurricanes, and ships that never returned to port. There was fear. There was mental illness.

Aziraphale loved everything, in spite of these faults. Sometimes he felt that the world was ending, that there was just too much hurt and nothing he did made any difference—but then he would turn around and see a small kindness, a touch, a smile, and he would ache all over with love.

Small wonder, then, that one of the things he loved was a demon.

Crowley was the Enemy, of course, but he was also a kindred spirit, and the only fixed constant that Aziraphale could find in an ever-changing world. He was the speed of light in a vacuum, part of a vast, dimensionally consistent equation that Aziraphale did not understand.

Aziraphale had seen more of Crowley during the first eleven years of the Antichrist's childhood than he cared to admit – more than he ever had before, certainly. He had considered Crowley to be something like a friend for several hundred years, but had never really thought about him too much before.

But after the pseudo-apocalypse, long after the time that he and the demon _should_ have gone their separate ways, Aziraphale found that Crowley was never very far from his thoughts. He would see things – mundane things – and think, _Crowley would like that, he would laugh_, even as he hurried to avert whatever danger had caught his eye; or, _I wonder if Crowley's hand is in this, somewhere. It isn't his style, but I'll ask next time I see him_.

The third time he caught himself thinking this, he was alarmed to realize that he had inadvertently grown close enough to Crowley to know his _style_. And then he began to notice other things.

He found that he enjoyed having the demon around. Obnoxious and evil as he was, Crowley was _fun_. And, ironically enough, Aziraphale found himself behaving more angelically around Crowley than he ordinarily would have, as if to prove some sort of point. And after a bit of confused self-searching, he realized that he had been behaving this way since… Well, for several thousand years. Before the Arrangement, even.

Being around Crowley brought a kind of excitement, an oh-what-will-happen-next feeling, a happy little buzz that had nothing to do with the quantity of alcohol they sometimes imbibed. And eventually Aziraphale realized, with a slow, creeping horror, that he had (quite without meaning to), somehow come to love the demon in a way that was different from how he loved everything else. He loved Crowley like he loved the world – a helpless, crushing, all-encompassing love for everything good and bad and in between that made him gasp with the enormity of it. Aziraphale would fight for Crowley if he had to. He would kill for him, if it came to that.

They went out shortly after Aziraphale had come to this realization, and he watched Crowley's face move as he spoke, and he wondered what it would be like to _touch_, and then was alarmed that he had even thought such a thing. Crowley would find this absolutely hilarious, he knew, and probably wouldn't even mind (it was Lust, after all, wasn't it) – but the thought of what Aziraphale's superiors might do was nothing short of terrifying.

"What's eating you?" Crowley asked suddenly, during a pause in the conversation, and Aziraphale jumped.

"What? What do you mean?"

Crowley's expression was a blend of amusement and curiosity and something that Aziraphale wished he could call concern, but Crowley didn't _do_ concern. "You've been looking at me funny all evening. And you're staring into space more than usual. What's up?"

Aziraphale had flailed wildly and spouted off some excuse or other, and had excused himself as early as possible. He did not return to the shop. He was leaving London. This had to stop, somehow, and Aziraphale in his desperation could only think of one way to do it.

He fled to northern Africa. He was needed there anyway, he told himself, the people needed his help. The unrest in the Sudan had turned to something resembling open war, and Aziraphale told himself that he had been absent for far too long.

He fell into the familiar routine with a kind of bizarre relief – heal, pray, teach, love. He helped what humans he could without directly interfering, he held children and sang to them as they died, and when they were gone he was the only one who wept for them. He forgave the fighters, the insurgents, the soldiers, the murderers, the rapists. He forgave the protesters their ignorance.

The desperation and pain were almost comforting, a welcome change from the confusion of emotions. He did not sleep, he did not eat, he paid little heed to his human body. He worked tirelessly, without stopping, without thinking, until he barely felt the passing of time.

He poured himself into them, body and soul, loved them with every fiber of his being. He loved until he felt he could not possibly love anything else, until the world went white around him and his human form gave over to exhaustion. He loved until he thought he would die of it.


	2. Chapter 2

Here we are for Chapter 2! I'm marginally more happy with this one, because at this point I had an idea of what I wanted out of this fic.

Not gonna lie, I think this fic is pretty OOC, but I did try to make it as in character within the out of character as I could. See what you think. Heigh-ho, and away we go!

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**Chapter 2**

Aziraphale came back to himself outside his shop, just in front of the heavy wood door that was familiar as breathing. He should have felt confused. He felt nothing.

He did not know how he had returned to England, but he was unsurprised to find himself there. Later, he would liken it to the way life moved in one of his rare dreams, a seamless and senseless shift of environments that seemed perfectly reasonable at the time.

His ears rang, and the smell of blood hung around him like a shroud. The blue eyes looking blankly back through him from his reflection in his shop window were distant, and the hand that unlocked the door was thin.

And the demon in the chair by the fire was furious.

Crowley glared balefully from within the circle of light. Aziraphale stopped dead in his tracks, looking at him. Crowley's voice was low and angry. "Where the _hell_ have you been."

Aziraphale turned his gaze to the fire, blinked once, and then sat down in the chair that he knew was his. He had been standing by the door, and now he was sitting by the fire and looking into it, and that was the way of things, wasn't it?

"Aziraphale," said Crowley in rather a different voice, after a moment of shocked silence. "You look like ten kinds of fried shit. What _happened?_"

Aziraphale didn't move, couldn't say anything. He'd left because he'd needed space. He'd come back – why? He couldn't remember coming back. Or why. But here he was.

There was a sharp clinking sound nearby

_the sound of a semiautomatic jamming_

but he didn't react, didn't seek cover like he knew he should have. He didn't move until Crowley shoved a mug into his hands, and then he only looked at it stupidly. Crowley had to wrap Aziraphale's fingers around the cup to get him to hold it, and then the angel gripped it so hard that his knuckles went white.

"It's tea," Crowley growled. He was still angry, his eyes were blazing and his teeth were clenched but he was putting that on hold for now and Aziraphale had better be grateful. "Drink it. You like tea, remember?"

"Tea," said Aziraphale, and drank it.

Crowley, in spite of the fact that he kind of wanted to kill Aziraphale, was beginning to be really worried. It wasn't like the angel to disappear without a word for six years, and return looking like he'd survived the heat death of the universe.

Still more troublesome was that he _hadn't_ returned. Not of his own volition, anyway; he had been brought back. Crowley had found an envelope on his sofa when he'd returned home that afternoon, addressed to "A. Crowley" in an unfamiliar hand. The brief note inside had said only,

_Crowley, _

_I am bringing Aziraphale Home as ſoon as the Wind is more favourable. He is cloſer to you than to me, and of the two of Us, I believe that he truſts you more. Be in his Shop when he arrives, pleaſe, and thank you for your Diſcretion in keeping the Contents of this Miſsive to yourſelf until ſuch Time as may be neceſsary. That being ſaid, pleaſe remind him that Love is not a Sin. _

'_Чаo,'_ _as you ſay,_

_~M. _

The antiquated phrasing and odd rendition of Crowley's usual farewell had alarmed him, as had the simple initial at the end and the request to keep the letter private. Whoever had written it was both familiar with Crowley and severely behind the times, which usually meant Below. That this 'M' knew that Aziraphale apparently trusted Crowley did not bode well for either of them.

But six years with no word from Aziraphale was unusual, and now this note had turned up, so he had gone to the shop and got a fire going. And, growing angrier and more worried by the minute, had sat down to wait.

And then his associate had staggered in and Crowley had lit into him without thinking, six years' worth of accumulated resentment and questions all set to come tumbling out, but they'd died on his lips as soon as the angel had come into the light and Crowley had gotten a good look at his face. He hadn't seen Aziraphale look like this since the Crusades.

He gave the angel a few minutes' peace to drink his tea before he asked again what had happened. Aziraphale didn't move.

"I need you to tell me." Crowley leaned a little closer, wary. "You need to tell me. You disappeared for years and now you look like you're going to die any moment. Aziraphale—" he hesitated briefly, then swallowed his pride and forged ahead. "My hand in your belt, my hand on your head." The idioms were Arabic and didn't really translate, but they better than _please_, which just would have been degrading.

Silence.

"All right, fine, just –" He didn't think about it, didn't dare stop and consider for a moment what he was doing. The walls of defense around his mind came crashing down. "Fine. Show me."

There was a pause.

And then Aziraphale told him, sent him wave upon wave of images and sounds and smells and emotion. Grief, mostly, and confusion, and something shielded and blurry. Crowley wasn't surprised.

He shuddered out of Aziraphale's mind, stared at the angel in consternation.

"What were you _thinking?_" he demanded. "Have you lost your bloody _mind?_"

Aziraphale still wouldn't look at him. "I was needed. I had to go."

"Without telling me?"

Aziraphale shuddered. "Please leave."

Crowley was very tempted to go and come back when things had returned to normal. This blank, unblinking creature was not the angel Crowley knew.

Except he _wouldn't_ return to normal, not without some kind of impetus. Crowley had seen him like this once before, only once. The Crusades had been hard on both of them, and while Aziraphale's faith in the Almighty was not something that could be moved, Crowley had nearly lost the faith he had in humanity. Bitter and hateful, he had finally turned on his silent associate, throwing everything un-angelic the angel had ever done in his face, all withering sarcasm and cruel truths until finally Aziraphale had responded and discorporated him in a fit of relieved and righteous fury. They had both felt much better after that.

But this time was different. Now they were—not friends, but something similar, similar enough that verbal abuse wouldn't help, and anyway Crowley's schedule was too busy for him to invite discorporation. He would have to try something different.

Finally he decided he had had enough. "I will destroy this building and everything in it," he snarled, stepping around to stand in front of Aziraphale, crouching so that the angel would _have_ to look at his face. It didn't work. Aziraphale just looked through him. "So help me, I will burn it to the ground if you don't stand up and start caring. I will tear the throat from your human corporation and force you home if I have to. _Look at me, damn you!_"

"Leave me alone," said Aziraphale, turning away.

"_No_," Crowley snapped, and kissed him. Hard.


	3. Chapter 3

I think this chapter is longer than the other two. Crowley loses his cool, which is unusual, but you'll find out why. Also, I'm writing the next bit of this a lot faster than I thought I would. I already have the next three chapters laid out, and probably a few more after that to come.

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**Chapter 3**

He poured his indignant rage into Aziraphale, dimly aware that the angel was shaking his head, pushing at him, trying to break away. Crowley wasn't having any of that – he growled and gripped Aziraphale's wrists with both hands, pressed him against the high back of the chair, pried his jaws apart with teeth and tongue. The chair fell over backwards and Crowley went down with it, dragged Aziraphale to the floor and held him down.

_Fight me!_

Aziraphale was coming to life. Crowley had hold of his wrists again, was pushing them to the floor on either side of his head, hard enough to bruise, and Aziraphale was _finally_ struggling against him. Get him fighting, that was how to bring him back, and this was only another battlefield. Crowley licked into his mouth and ground his hips down against Aziraphale's pelvis, grinned when the angel bucked and kicked under him.

Aziraphale twisted his head suddenly and caught Crowley's bottom lip between his teeth and bit it hard enough to break the skin. Crowley was caught off guard just long enough for Aziraphale to throw him off and scramble a short distance away, panting and glaring at him.

Crowley wiped his mouth on his sleeve, still grinning. "Feel better?"

Aziraphale wasn't sure _what_ he felt, or whether it was an improvement or not. His consternation must have shown on his face, because Crowley laughed. "It worked, didn't it? Got some life into you, didn't I?"

"You might have – struck me, or something," Aziraphale said as he got slowly to his feet. His voice sounded strange to his own ears. It was the first time he'd really heard himself speak in over a year. He felt as though his joints should be creaking from disuse. "Why did you do _that_?"

"Why did you leave?" Crowley shot back, keeping his seat on the floor.

"I only had to get away for a time, that's all. I needed a change of scenery."

"You needed to get away from me."

Aziraphale hesitated, which was answer enough. Crowley sighed and fell back onto the floor. His face was shadowed, and his arm and hip hurt from where he'd landed when Aziraphale had thrown him. The fire was dying.

After a long pause, Crowley said, "I don't suppose you know anyone who signs their name 'M'?"

Aziraphale stared at the mantle. "Moriarty, maybe?"

Crowley snorted. "Not Moriarty."

Aziraphale offered him a smile that did not reach his eyes. He wanted to scream. Six years had changed nothing. "Why do you ask?"

Crowley shook his head. "Look, we can talk about this tomorrow. When was the last time you had any sleep?"

"1983."

Crowley shot him a dirty look, then stood up and pulled Aziraphale's coat out of thin air, held it out. "Angel or no, you are sleeping tonight."

Aziraphale stepped away. He had left because of Crowley. The last thing he wanted to do right now was sleep in the demon's apartment. "I'll sleep here."

"Your shop's wards are outdated, and neither of us has the stamina right now to make sure they're up to code." A lie. He was perfectly fine, he just wanted to keep Aziraphale where he could watch him.

"Don't tempt me," Aziraphale said sharply, and Crowley looked genuinely confused.

"I'm not trying to tempt you."

Aziraphale went with him without speaking, crawled into the massive bed and shut his eyes without saying anything, did not comment when he felt the mattress shift under Crowley's weight. Truth be told, he was amused at this last; he had assumed that Crowley's mattress would be one of those ridiculous newfangled things, what were they called, tempura-something? Something to do with feet, he thought, fried feet, and then was lost to sleep.

He woke to someone poking him and calling his name. "Feet," said Aziraphale clearly, and opened his eyes.

"What?"

Aziraphale blinked, trying to remember where he was and what he was doing there. "What?" he muttered, and scrubbed a hand over his eyes. "What. What_._"

"You said 'feet.'"

"I don't." He sat up and sniffed, blinked some more. He didn't much care for sleep. While the act itself was rather pleasant, he tended to wake up feeling muddled and slow. "I. What. I don't."

The person next to him made as if to say something, but Aziraphale held up a hand. For a moment, he sat in silence, re-ordering his thoughts, then turned and looked to his left.

Crowley looked steadily back at him, silhouetted against the setting sun, two gold eyes burning out of a shadowed face.

"Ah." Aziraphale looked away, now fully awake. "I remember now."

"Wonderful," said Crowley, but didn't move. "Is there something you'd like to tell me, angel?"

Aziraphale shook his head. He still felt a little fuzzy around the edges. "It's nothing to do with you, dear boy. I think I had better just get back to my shop."

Crowley grabbed him by the arm, scowling. "Oh no, you don't."

Aziraphale jerked away, scrambling out of bed. "Don't…"

"Oh for _fuck's sake!_" It was very nearly a scream, and Aziraphale jumped. "What is _wrong_ with you? You won't look at me, you won't speak to me, and as near as I can make out you went straight from the park to Africa last time we met up. _I_ made you run, angel, don't tell me I didn't, and I can't figure out _why!_ What did I _do?_"

"You made me love you," Aziraphale snapped, before he could stop himself. "Isn't that enough?" His head was spinning and beginning to hurt. The utter shock on Crowley's face might have been funny, another time.

And suddenly Crowley was _there_, lips on his, hands clutching either side of his face. And he was dragged back to the bed and slammed down yet again, and all the while, Crowley was kissing him desperately, and he tasted of cloves and incense.

Aziraphale turned his head away, gasping, hands fisting in the sheets. "Crowley," he said, being very careful not to let his voice shake, to keep his facial expression blank as he stared at a spot on the wall. "I could kill you for less."

Crowley stopped, eyes closed, long fingers tangled in Aziraphale's hair, and then he pressed his face against the angel's shoulder. He was breathing hard, though he did not need to, and – Aziraphale blinked – he was actually _shaking_.

He should push Crowley away _now_, while he had the chance, he should end this now. He very nearly did. But this was Crowley. Flash Bastard, TM. The professional tempter, the demon with a sarcastic streak a mile wide, the demon that had brought humanity to its knees while it was only a few days old, that had thwarted Armageddon. And he was all but clinging to Aziraphale.

He couldn't just leave him like this. Something was wrong.

Hesitantly, Aziraphale put his arms around Crowley, replaying their brief exchange in his head and wondering what he had missed. Crowley shuddered and one hand relaxed enough to slide down to Aziraphale's throat, thumb pressing lightly against the pulse under his jaw, fingers curling around the side of his neck. His other hand remained clenched in Aziraphale's hair.

After a long moment, he muttered something into Aziraphale's chest. The sound hummed through the angel's ribcage. "Sorry, what?"

Crowley tilted his head very slightly. "I said, I already knew you loved me. Idiot." This was news to Aziraphale, who had only realized the extent of his feelings a few days before he'd run away. "You're an _angel_. You love everything; loving is what you _do_. It's not like it's - _personal_, or anything."

Aziraphale hesitated, then craned his head forward and pressed his lips to Crowley's hair. Crowley froze. Aziraphale didn't notice. It was out now, he might as well stop trying. Might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb, he thought, resigned.

"It _is_ personal. That's why I left." He let his head fall back and stared up at the ceiling. "I had to get away, because with you, I'm afraid it is very personal indeed. And I have no idea what to do about that. I don't know what _Upstairs_ will do about it."

"You're worried about falling, I would –"

"I am _worried_ about them destroying you," said Aziraphale, very softly. "They think I'm…well, frankly, I'm almost certain they think me mad. They don't so much approve of me as they humor me. But I don't think they would, not about this. You're a bit of a sore spot for most of them. I think they would…shoot first and ask questions later, to use the vernacular. Loving a demon like this?" He shook his head slowly. "Forget sin, it's a slap in the face. They would never accept it."

It took Aziraphale several seconds to realize that Crowley was actually laughing.

"Crowley, what on Earth?"

Crowley snorted and raised his head, gold eyes almost glowing. The light of the sunset brushed the smooth planes of his face, picked out every detail in lines of red and orange. He was beautiful, Aziraphale thought, and dangerous, and his heart twisted painfully in his chest.

"I have a message for you," Crowley said, the corners of his mouth pulling into a wry smile, "I don't know who from. Maybe a friend of yours. M."

"_From_ _whom_," said Aziraphale quietly.

Crowley looked down at him and blinked, then shrugged. "If you like. Sure. From whom. Anyway." He shook his head. "They said to remind you that love is not a sin. Does that mean anything to you?"

_Remind me?_

A scarred wooden table. A silk opera hat. Alcohol that made Aziraphale choke and sputter. An assurance of support from one of the only other angels to spend any amount of time on Earth.

He stared very intently at nothing for a moment, stunned, and then he squeezed his eyes closed against the sudden tears that burned them. Relief swept through him like a flood, erasing tension and leaving him weak and trembling in its wake.

Crowley looked on in horrified confusion as Aziraphale rolled onto his side and covered his face with both hands, and he slid off the angel to curl behind him. "What, what is it? Who is it?"

Aziraphale only shook his head mutely, then reached around and pulled Crowley's head down, kissing him, crying into his mouth. Crowley returned the gesture desperately, hands skating nervously over the angel's body as if they weren't really sure where to rest.

"It's all right," Aziraphale whispered, beaming, when they broke apart. "I – I can't tell you who it is – but it's all right, Crowley, oh thank _God_ –"

"Please don't," said Crowley, just as fervently, and Aziraphale chuckled.

"All right," he said. "I'll do that. You just…stay." He paused. "I _am_ sorry. I didn't mean for you to find out at all, let alone in so melodramatic a fashion. This is going to make things unbearably awkward, isn't it?"

"I don't think so," Crowley said, and sat up. He yawned. "Like I said, I've known for ages."

"But you didn't know that I –"

"Sure," said Crowley, shrugging. "But it doesn't change anything."

He was lying through his teeth, and knew it, and suspected that he shouldn't lie about something so obviously important to his—_fine_, have it your way—friend. But he was a demon. And Aziraphale was still too out of it to notice the incongruities in his recent behavior.

Aziraphale sighed. "I suppose I really ought to be getting back to the shop," he murmured. "I have a lot of dusting to do." He rolled over and stood, straightening his vest. He still looked a little dazed.

Crowley looked at him. "I'll see you tomorrow," he said. "We'll do lunch."

"That sounds lovely, dear. I'll see you there."

Crowley waited until he heard the door to his apartment swing shut before he slumped and ran a hand through his dark hair, scowling.

He crawled to the middle of his too-large, empty bed, and sprawled over the black silk without bothering to get under the covers. He waited for sleep to take him, but it was a long time coming.

Aziraphale was an angel, and he was good at his job. And his job was to teach love.

"Shit," said Crowley to the empty room.


	4. Chapter 4

And we're back! I'm having more fun with this than I thought I would - I've never done a multiple-chapter fic before. This is fun.

A. and C. are not mine. They are Pratchett's and Gaiman's.

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**Chapter 4**

It had taken Crowley a long, long time to come to terms with the way he felt towards Aziraphale. He wasn't even sure if there was a word for it. He had wondered, once, years ago, if it could be called love.

Over the years, he had made something of a study of human love because it was one of the things that he truly did not understand. He'd started off with the theater—dramas, musicals, opera—but that had been almost worse than nothing, because everything was so exaggerated beyond anything even _potentially_ rational that Crowley simply couldn't get a handle on it. Take Shakespeare, for example. _Romeo and Juliet_ was supposedly the most poignant, timeless love story ever to grace popular culture, and Crowley just couldn't get it. It didn't make any _sense_. It might have, had the lovers in question known one another longer and formed a stronger bond.

The one variable Crowley had noticed that stayed more or less constant throughout his entire study was bonding. If it was going to last, lovers had to have something in common other than a sense of "you're hot, let's have sex." And most of the great romances seemed to be based on little more than intense physical attraction.

So he'd started watching real couples. He watched how they moved, how they thought. A human in a happy relationship tended to resist certain kinds of temptation much better than a human that was currently unattached. Humans in _un_happy relationships almost gravitated towards temptation, something that Crowley used to his advantage on a fairly regular basis.

And then there was the girl who had been engaged, but really didn't know why, and really wasn't all that happy with her fiancé. He had seduced her, of course he had, and it had been so _easy_. And there had been others before her in almost the same situation.

What set this one apart was that she had hung herself not twelve hours after waking up in an empty bed.

_There it was again_. That was the bit Crowley didn't understand, and _that_ was the bit that all the dramas and musicals and operas played up, that all the humans seemed to drool over. Stories that otherwise would have been vapid and empty (that _are_ vapid and empty, he snarled) became bestsellers because of the great and stupid lengths their characters would go to for _love_.

And yet Aziraphale seemed to understand it all perfectly well. He was an angel, after all, and love was his job and his essence, but he actually _understood it_.

Crowley first noticed something was wrong during the 1730s, in Rhineland, when a stray bayonet had nearly caught Aziraphale in the throat. Crowley had altered its direction just a touch, just so that it would graze instead of kill. And then, of course, he had realized what he had done and been horrified. Had realized, but hadn't been able to understand _why_.

[[ After another few decades or so of similar occurrences, he really began to wonder what the heck was up, because none of it made any sense and, in hindsight, he'd been doing little things like that for hundreds of years. At first he tried to blame it on the Arrangement, but the Arrangement was a _business agreement_, built to allow them to perform to the best of their abilities and stay out of each other's way, but somehow they always ended up in company. Somehow, it had progressed into a more social sort of relationship, and Crowley wasn't sure how.

And he _enjoyed_ Aziraphale's company, he really did. It wasn't an "I'll put up with this for the sake of Business"; it wasn't even a "meh, I don't mind spending time with you." No, _this_ was a "Hey, that was fun, same time next week?" sort of feeling, and it was deeply unsettling. Crowley didn't spend much time in Hell, but he was pretty sure demons weren't supposed to have _fun_ with angels, weren't supposed to laugh with them or drink with them or have shared jokes with them.

So he had spent a few years growing more and more unnerved and annoyed until finally, somewhere in the very late 1800s, he had sat down and written down a list of hard facts regarding Aziraphale.

_We work well together._

_Our association has progressed beyond the original intent of the Arrangement._

_He's a good drinking partner and conversationalist._

_I enjoy spending time with him, usually._

_I know I can trust him._

_I find him, in general, to be fairly amusing. He can be annoying sometimes. To be fair, so can I._

That last bit was really the long and short of it: Crowley felt the need to be _fair_ to Aziraphale. That was all. That, and he could trust the angel. He _didn't_ (or anyway that's what he told himself), but he knew he could, and that was what mattered.

After a while, he added one more point to the list:

_He makes life interesting_.

And he had looked at the list, and nodded to himself, and left it tucked inside the handwritten and faded _Capture of Oechalia_ he had pinched, and both story and list stayed in the back of Crowley's desk drawer until he'd nearly forgotten them both.

The points did not add up to love, they added up to friendship. Still troubling for a demon, but nothing to worry about.

But there was one point that was never added to the list, because it first entered Crowley's mind almost a century after he'd forgotten about _Capture of Oechalia_.

Crowley was a demon, and he tempted people. Simple. And sometimes, that temptation meant sex, which was something that Crowley did not exactly object to. He _liked _sex, when he was in the mood for it. He was good at it. Sometimes he even found his partners attractive, and those lays were usually more fun.

Aziraphale's 1945 corporation—the one he still wore, if you didn't count that bit with Adam and Madam Tracy—had taken some getting used to. Crowley hadn't been sure if he liked it or not, because Crowley had liked pretty things, and while the new body was well-proportioned if a little on the heavy side, it was more solid than pretty. His old body had been pretty.

After a while, Crowley had gotten used to it, and he had to admit that the middle-aged, dumpy body suited the angel a lot better than the previous one had. After a while, Crowley decided that he actually preferred it. This one was more expressive. And it smelled better.

He had become attracted to Aziraphale's physical form in 1452, when the angel had come back from Above after being discorporated by a flash flood, and his new corporation had been built along the same lines that Crowley's was. Crowley had said as much, and Aziraphale had reacted badly, and afterwards Crowley had found himself making comparisons and counting all the ways they were different until he decided that no, actually, Aziraphale _didn't_ look like him. And was, actually, rather attractive.

His next corporation had also been attractive by Crowley's standards, but he had thought nothing of it—had not bothered to realize the difference between _finding someone attractive_ and _being attracted to someone_. And this was the third corporation since the one in 1452, and it was _still _attractive, tartan and slight podginess and everything. Still, he thought little of it.

He did wonder, from time to time, what sex with Aziraphale would be like. Humans were fun, demons more so. Aziraphale would be, Crowley thought, either very interesting or very boring.

Crowley wouldn't have minded trying it. He might even have tried suggesting it, if he hadn't been so certain that Aziraphale _would_ mind. And Crowley was happy with their relationship as it stood—drinking partners, casual companions. And even if Aziraphale hadn't minded, there was the whole _angel_ thing to consider. Angels were love; it was their job and their essence and Crowley was well aware that Aziraphale probably even loved him, stupid as that was. And sex would only complicate things, especially if Aziraphale took it the wrong way.

So he left that little idea in the back of his mind, and it very rarely came up again.

But.

Every once in a while, the two of them would be out together and Aziraphale would say something, or maybe Crowley would say something, and Aziraphale would react and turn his head or move his hands a certain way, or his eyes would light up or he would go very quiet and thoughtful and his face would scrunch up a little, and Crowley would all of a sudden catch himself wondering, _really wondering_, what sex would be like with a creature that could move like _that_.

And he _wanted_. He was surprised at how badly he wanted. But he pushed it away, always, as a Bad Idea because it would change this whatever-it-was that they had going on, and he was _enjoying_ this, thank you very much. He knew even without having to give it much thought that he could care less whether their relationship ever became sexual in nature. It made little difference to him, regardless of how much he wanted sometimes. He didn't care about sex _that_ much.

Then came the almost-apocalypse, when they both almost lost everything they had ever cared about. Both of them came away more badly shaken than either cared to admit. Crowley finally dealt with it by making another list (Crowley _liked_ lists) of all the things he was truly glad that he hadn't lost, and was surprised how many things on the list (and there were many, many things) involved Aziraphale in some way. He tried to consolidate, and finally came up with:

_Aziraphale_

and that was where he got stuck. He wanted to say something like, _talking to_ or _plotting with_, but really, all it came down to was that he would miss Aziraphale if he ever lost the angel for good. And then he wondered what life would be like without Aziraphale, and he realized.

He wouldn't just miss Aziraphale. He _needed_ him. Life without someone to share it with would be beyond boring, beyond pointless, beyond hopeless. And the only person in three worlds that Crowley thought he could possibly bear to spend his life with was Aziraphale.

And _that_ was what undid him, because that was a major part of what love _was;_ that was what people who loved each other _did_. They didn't just spend time together, they shared their lives and they were happy doing it and a lot of them were just as broken when they lost a partner as Crowley was now certain he would be.

But _humans_ had the afterlife, and that was a luxury afforded to neither demons nor angels, which only made it worse because if he lost Aziraphale, there would be no getting him back.

Crowley spent three agonizing months flat on his back in bed, staring at the ceiling, thinking about what to do. Then he sat up, showered, and dressed. He had made his decision.

He would do nothing.

He would do absolutely nothing except what he had been doing. He would not tell Aziraphale. He would not do anything untoward. He would not give any sign of how he felt, what he thought, what this horrible truth that he had discovered was.

If he loved Aziraphale, it was not in the conventional sense, but it was close. Too close, he thought, and he would be blessed if he actually did anything about it. He liked the way things were already—comfortable and familiar and blissfully uncomplicated.

Life returned to normal. Crowley kept what he knew locked firmly in the back of his mind.

But then Aziraphale disappeared without a word for over half a decade, and hadn't sent any news. Before the almost-apocalypse this wouldn't have bothered Crowley at all, but he and Aziraphale had spent eleven years in very close company, and the abrupt absence was startling. Crowley had begun to be worried that Aziraphale had been recalled, that he would never return. Eventually he had come back but he wouldn't look at Crowley and he wouldn't talk and _something had changed between them_.

Crowley knew he had done something. He had to have done, to make Aziraphale flee like that. Crowley had spent 87 hours lying awake next to the angel (who had gone terrifyingly thin and odd-looking, it wasn't _right;_ that wasn't what he was supposed to look like, but the eyes were the same, at least the eyes were the same), afraid to move in case he'd vanish again. He had run over that day in his mind over and over again, trying to figure out what on earth had gone wrong and trying to decide if Aziraphale suspected something.

And then Aziraphale had finally woken up and Crowley had tried to make him look at him, and Aziraphale had freaked out because he was still exhausted and out of sorts and Crowley had yelled because he was on edge, and suddenly things were fine. Crowley knew why Aziraphale had dropped off the face of the earth, and Aziraphale _didn't_ know about It, and everything was fine.

Days passed. Weeks passed. Months passed. Years went by. And everything seemed absolutely fine.


	5. Chapter 5

I have a thing about using holidays as plot devices. It's just so much fun, and there's history behind them, but I think I probably ought to stop doing it if only because I feel like I do it so often. Also, thank you to everyone who's reviewed or added this to their alerts - people seem to be liking it, so far, which is a happy.

Aziraphale and Crowley not mine blah blah Pratchett and Gaiman you know the drill.

* * *

**Chapter 5**

Aziraphale thought he knew the score: he loved Crowley, and Crowley didn't mind. He hadn't _expected _that, but there it was. Both of them, separately, resolved to never speak of it unless the other brought it up.

But the dance had changed, the meter was faster now and the steps suddenly seemed a hell of a lot more complicated, and it was a good long time before Aziraphale finally admitted that Crowley really did seem fine. He hadn't stopped leaning on Aziraphale when they were drunk, he hadn't stopped breaking into the shop at all hours, he hadn't stopped harassing the angel about his books, he hadn't stopped being a flash bastard.

But he _shouldn't_ be fine with it. He was a demon. If anything, he ought to at least tease Aziraphale about it sometimes, but he never did, not once.

And then Christmas happened, the third Christmas since Aziraphale returned and the third Christmas they spent pretending, insisting to themselves, that Everything Was Fine.

Crowley banged open the shop door, and Aziraphale jumped. "You."

Aziraphale blinked, frowned. "Me?"

"You," said Crowley again, and dropped a flat package wrapped in black paper into Aziraphale's surprised hands. "Present. Open."

"Goodness, we're coherent today," Aziraphale muttered, turned the package over a few times, frowned at it. "Crowley, what on Earth? You don't give me presents on Christmas."

Crowley grimaced. "Yesss but it's _tradition_."

"Not for you it isn't."

"I forgot to give it to you on Halloween, then." When Aziraphale looked dubious, Crowley spun around in a very impatient little circle, squinting his eyes the way he did only when deeply uncomfortable about something. "Look, I found it in the back of a drawer and I've been meaning to give it to you for _ages_ only there never seemed to be a time, and then I forgot and would you just open the blessed package. I _know_ you don't have this one."

Aziraphale was laughing and waving at him to stop. "All right, _all right_, dear. Here, take yours, we may as well do this together if you're going in for tradition this year." He handed Crowley an envelope and picked at a seam in the paper. "How long is _ages?_"

"A long, long time," said Crowley, opening the envelope and blinking at the contents with genuine interest. "Millennia. _Oooh_. Re-enactment. I love these, it's always fun seeing what they get wrong."

"These are supposed to be very good. Some of the best, in fact."

Crowley looked at him over the tops of his glasses, grinning. "We'll just have to see, won't we? I shall have to dust off my codpiece."

Aziraphale looked horrified. "I thought that rotted away centuries ago."

"You don't have to _look_."

"Crowley, it's impossible not to, that's the whole point of a codpiece." When Crowley only smirked, he sniffed and turned his attention back to the wrapping paper. "Very well. I shall just have to dust off _mine_. I'm getting too old for this," he added as the last of the paper fell away, and then he went very still.

Aziraphale with a new old book was a sight to see, and any practiced viewer could tell that he was very, very pleased with what he was holding by the way his lips curled up and in at the corners, and the way his eyes went full-open (usually he held them at half-mast), and the way he touched it with only the tips of his fingers.

"Crowley. This is."

"Yes," said Crowley. "'S why I thought you'd like it."

Very carefully, Aziraphale turned it over. "You had this in your desk."

"Yes."

"For _three thousand years?_"

Crowley just smirked, and threw his arm around Aziraphale's shoulders and pulled him out into the sunlight, never mind that it's Christmas Day and the hectic-frantic-run-here-there-everywhere-go-go-go month that is Crowley's very own personal playground was over and the after-Christmas afterglow that is Aziraphale's domain had begun. Today, just this once, everything was fine, and Crowley was allowed to enjoy himself.

But when the day was over, and Crowley drove away from the shop and left Aziraphale alone with his _Capture of Oechalia_, Aziraphale cracked the story open and began to read. And at some point, he turned a page (the book was hanging in midair, he didn't dare touch it with his hands again, he'd have to put it in a climate-controlled room or _something_) and a smaller, much newer scrap of paper fluttered to the floor.

A book-mark? Crowley wasn't the sort to use book-marks; he dog-eared pages gleefully because he knew it bothered Aziraphale, but for something this old maybe he would. Aziraphale picked it up, turned it over. And paused.

He read it, sat down, read it again. It was Crowley's hand; there was no mistaking the cramped, spidery writing, but it was such an un-Crowley thing to write. God only knew what had prompted it. Life, thought Aziraphale, was getting a little weirder. It had been weird ever since he'd returned from Africa three years prior, but now it was even weirder.

_How did I get here, anyway?_

The unexpected thought caught him off-guard. He wasn't sure what had brought _that _on, but he had to admit it was a reasonable question. He still couldn't recall how he had gotten from Africa back to England, and—

And Crowley had been waiting when he'd entered the shop, madder than hell but waiting for him, willing to make tea and bludgeon Aziraphale back into himself by any means necessary.

Aziraphale sat back in his chair, staring into nothing. Why hadn't he remembered this before? More than that, why hadn't it struck him as odd? Crowley had _known_. Somehow, Crowley had known when to come and that he would need to do some damage control when Aziraphale got there.

How had he known?


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6**

Crowley didn't go and see Aziraphale again for nearly a week, as he was out of the country on business. When he returned from Ecuador, he dragged a protesting angel ("Crowley, I have _plans_ later!") out for Thai.

Aziraphale was quiet through dinner. Crowley watched him closely for a while before finally setting down his chopsticks. "What."

Aziraphale looked up at him, studied him for a minute. "How did you know?" he finally asked. "Where to find me, I mean, and when. You were waiting when I returned. Speaking of which," he added when Crowley's lips thinned and he sat back in his chair, "how _did_ I manage to come back to England?"

Crowley's glared down at his noodles, then looked back up at Aziraphale with a sharp smile. _Here we go_, he thought. "You know, I was hoping you could tell me."

Aziraphale's brow furrowed. "What?"

"I haven't the faintest idea how you got back."

"Then how did you…?" Aziraphale trailed off, shook his head. "I don't understand."

Crowley nodded. "Neither do I, really. It's that M you said you wouldn't tell me about," he said, and dug in the pocket of his jacket, pulled the folded bit of paper out of thin air with absolutely none of the embellishments of a street magician, and handed it to Aziraphale.

The angel scanned it, blinked, and burst out laughing. "And you think _I'm_ antiquated," he murmured. "Goodness. Long s and everything, I don't believe it. I only wonder that it's in English, but I suppose he thought Russian might give him away." He glanced up, eyes dancing. "That bit at the end, 'Ciao,' that's probably his idea of a joke."

Crowley cocked his head. "Then you know who sent it?"

"My dear, of course I know who sent it, I thought I made that clear three years ago," Aziraphale told him, amused. This was clearly something that he'd been sitting on for some time.

"Well?" Crowley asked, after a long pause.

Aziraphale paused, wet his lips, leaned forward, and said, with a weird little smile, "Listen, how familiar are you with Tolstoy?"

Crowley blinked. "I've read him. Why?"

"You've read all the ones I have."

"Yeah."

The weird smile grew wider. "There's a short story. About an angel who disobeyed God. Have you read that one?"

Crowley's lip curled. "I _hated _that one. Talk about cloying and trite and disgusting."

"True stories are, sometimes," said Aziraphale, and watched the gears begin to turn in Crowley's mind as the demon tried to remember.

A moment later, the muscles around Crowley's eyes and mouth went completely slack. "_Michael sssent it?_"

Aziraphale grinned. Crowley goggled. Their noodles had gone cold but neither of them cared.

"Mother of _God,_" said Crowley, and then "Ouch!" when Aziraphale jabbed him smartly in the wrist with his chopsticks.

"Don't blaspheme."

"I'll do as I bloody well pleassse," said Crowley absently. He was still trying and failing to wrap his mind around the idea of a human Michael. Bless, but that must have been a nasty shock. Crowley might have even felt bad for him—angel or no, turning human was something that all metaphysical beings wanted to avoid and Crowley was no exception—had the Michael he remembered not been a colossal dickhead, and he said so to Aziraphale.

Aziraphale, much to his astonishment, agreed. "He's mellower now, though. I think his time here gave him a bit of perspective. He still goes back to Russia every few decades, did you know? I ran into him once in Petrograd."

Crowley chuckled. "You _are_ antiquated."

Aziraphale waved a hand, irritated. "It was 1918, it was still Petrograd. And he looked absolutely wretched, I can tell you."

Crowley shrugged. "If it was 1918, everybody did. In any case, there's your answer. Michael brought you home, he told me where to find you," he said, trying to ignore how bizarre the sentence sounded, and looked pointedly at his watch. "We should head out. I for one am going to go and get drunk. New Year's sales, and that, and you're welcome to come." _I don't like where your train of thought is going. Allow me to derail it_.

There was a pause, during which Aziraphale took a deep breath. "Er."

_Blessit_.

Aziraphale studied him again for a few painful moments. "You already know what this is about, don't you?"

Crowley said nothing, and Aziraphale sat up a little straighter. "You don't have to pretend for my sake. Crowley, if you aren't okay with it, just say so. Or leave, if you can't bring yourself to talk. I'll understand, really, I will."

Crowley dug his claws into the table. "_That's_ what this is about? Are you _still_ on that?" Aziraphale opened his mouth, but Crowley cut him off. "I'm not going to tell you again, _angel_."

Aziraphale looked at him. Crowley looked back.

There was something else, something big, but Aziraphale couldn't put his finger on it. That first week back had been a confused blur. Eventually, he looked away. "I'm sorry," he said, quietly. "I know you don't like talking about these kinds of things, but I—I wanted to make sure."

Crowley shrugged. "I get it. It's fine." He had been using that word a lot lately. _Note to self, find new word_.

"The more you say that, the less I believe it," said Aziraphale, offering half a smile.

Crowley didn't return it. "Trussst me."


	7. Chapter 7

In Which Aziraphale is very much an angel, and Crowley is very much a demon. This was originally two very short chapters, but I think they go better together.

Neither character belongs to me! Both belong to Pratchett and Gaiman.

* * *

Crowley wasn't thinking, didn't want to think. Thinking had not been going well for him lately. After he let Aziraphale out at the Prince of Wales Theater (there had been a half-hearted suggestion that Crowley come along as well, which Crowley had less-than-politely declined), he drove in circles for over an hour, then parked in a black mood and stalked into a club he was familiar with so that he wouldn't have to think. It was one of the lower-rated clubs in that part of Westminster, but it was a good place to go when he wanted easy tempting and easier distractions, and he entered fully intending to take advantage of all the possible nuances of the term "easy."

But he knew as soon as he set foot in the place that something was wrong.

Something was _very_ wrong, if only because it felt so _right_-he could _smell_ it, almost, if it was a smell, cold in his sinuses turning to fire in the back of his mind, thrilling its way into his bones. At the bottom line, after taxes, after dividends, Crowley was both a serpent and a demon. Both of those creatures have strong instincts—demons are stronger regarding weakness, serpents regarding prey, and whatever was so very _wrong-right_ about this place was singing the song of a bad job well done to both sets of instincts.

His eyes fell closed and he lifted his face a little, lips parted, throat and jaw working soundlessly in an attempt to flood his senses with information.

Adrenaline and serotonin came first, flavored with the heady odor of human arousal, but that was to be expected. Identify the types, _anticipation-release-anxiety-fear-lust-want-demand_ and something that smelled suspiciously corporate, _ignore that_. He moved deeper into the club, threading around undulating bodies with his eyes closed (he used his eyes because they were convenient and added an extra layer of perception, not because he really _needed_ them, but in this situation they would only get in his way).

Alcohol, LSD, meth, cannabis, tobacco. A barrage of various prescriptions from what had to be nearly forty pharmacies (three of which Crowley didn't recognize), mixed with lazy-spiking hormones; some kids were having a pharm party upstairs. He grinned and stored the information away for later use.

He focused on the fear he'd smelled before, canted his head, licked his lips, _tasted_. Most of it was the type of fear Crowley would expect from a place like this: edgy, sharp, excited. But there was one thread—only one—that tasted legitimately terrified, and this was surrounded by _calculation-curiosity-testing-one-two-three-BLOOD BLOOD BLOOD_ and _PAIN_ and Crowley opened himself further with a little hiss of confused annoyance. The blood had no signature that Crowley could tell, it was almost totally clean.

Clean blood was an impossibility. There were no antibodies, no pathogens, no lingering molecular tags that Crowley could use for identification. He passed it by. Block out the blood and the pain. Ignore those. Focus on the terror-thread, let it precipitate out and dominate. _Good_. Now break it down into its component molecules.

Subject was male, confused, definitely drugged. Prescription, mostly pills, but there was almost certainly some anesthetic in there as well and something Crowley thought he didn't recognize but it sang to him, and it sang of fire and hate and vindictive glee.

There was one smell he did recognize, definitely, and it was that of a 1945 Chateau Rauzan-Segla threading its way through fear and _rage_ and his eyes flew open. His awareness of individual chemicals faded somewhat, leaving him a little dizzy in its wake.

_No_, he thought, while something much deeper whispered yes, yes. But it didn't make sense, it couldn't.

If Crowley had been more cognitive, he might have had questions, might have wondered why Aziraphale was here, what had happened, whether other people had been involved. But he wasn't; he was running on instinct and had dropped all pretense of humanity, and all he registered was the sharp fact that something was wrong. Aziraphale didn't _have _clean blood.

He followed the thread to a back door that said Alarm Will Sound, pushed it open. Stairs. Wet on his hand, and he looked down and saw red on the push bar of the door, smelled blood, and he blinked slowly and moved onto the landing, let the door slam shut behind him.

There was blood on the stairs, too, but Crowley didn't bother with it, didn't need to follow it. The taste of rage was almost tangible, now, and he followed _that_ to the cement of the alleyway, to the feathery shadows behind the rubbish bins.

The first things he saw were the wings, both corporeal and very, very obvious, blood and mud in the feathers. He let out a hiss of disgust, then composed himself enough to form words.

"Aziraphale, what the _hell_ did you do?"

The angel's head came up, unfocused eyes blazing white, and it choked out a Word.

Crowley yelled and threw himself out of the way, resisted the urge to retaliate (it ran counter to his interests, though not his instincts, but after centuries of faffing about with an angel he was pretty good at resisting his instincts), and grabbed Aziraphale by the shoulders before he could get out another blast. "_It's me, you stupid fuck!_"

The angel was raving under his breath in seventeen languages at once (most of which had never been heard by human ears) as Crowley hauled him out of the narrow space he had holed up in. He flailed blindly, missing the demon entirely, then sagged back to the ground, panting, curling around broken ribs.

Most of the blood wasn't Aziraphale's; this was the source of the clean blood Crowley had smelled earlier. But Aziraphale was out of his mind with pain and rage, and was high as a kite on a blend of narcotics that would have laid any human out flat in ten minutes, and Crowley would have bet real money that he hadn't done that to himself. One wing was dislocated, the other was broken in at least two places; God only knew why he had them out in the first place, but it didn't bode well at _all_.

Crowley reached down and tried to pull Aziraphale to his feet. It wasn't far to the angel's shop, and Crowley really didn't want to put him in the Bentley, and as long as he was conscious they might as well walk, but Aziraphale screamed and lashed out again with wings and fists. His aim was better the second time around, and Crowley staggered back.

Crowley swore, his lip cut and bleeding, and squinted in the sudden light of sunset. Never mind the sunglasses; he'd get new ones, but for a moment he seriously considered leaving Aziraphale where he lay. It wasn't his lookout, after all, and it had been a long time since he'd seen Aziraphale like this. Last time, Crowley had been the one who'd done it. Fixing this might be more trouble than it was worth, and he might have actually left if the raving hadn't slipped to human languages for a few seconds.

"_Needles._" The angel's voice was low, very nearly a hiss. "_N__eedles…hands, hands. The river. Hot. It's on fire. Everything's,_" and he went over to French, "_on fire, climb out of it, I_," Latin, "_can't see, can't_," back to sobbing Aramaic, "_fly, s__o much smoke, God, _please_ don't_—"

Crowley had heard enough. "All right," he snapped. "All right, you _complete_ arse, hold still. Fine. Okay." He moved like a striking snake, grabbed Aziraphale's wings and shoved him down, managing through sheer luck to trap one of Aziraphale's arms underneath him. He planted one knee squarely between his associate's shoulder-blades to pin him down, other knee across Aziraphale's free arm (it was an uncomfortable position, but it worked). He used his elbow to press the broken wing flat, then grabbed the dislocated one in both hands and twist-pulled. There was a _pop,_ and Aziraphale yelled and tried to scramble away, but all he managed was a pathetic little fluttering motion; Crowley had him by the wings and there really wasn't much he could do about it.

But then Crowley let go. _Mistake_.

Aziraphale tucked his broken wing close and rolled, rose to his knees and spun, snapping his good wing—the one Crowley had just fixed—up and back and catching the demon in the mouth as he started to stand. And as Crowley stumbled, Aziraphale swept the wing around again and knocked his legs out from under him. The back of Crowley's head hit the pavement with a _crack_.

He saw stars, and then he saw red, and he stood, walked to the stairs, and twisted off a piece of iron banister maybe two feet long. Behind him, Aziraphale hunched on one knee, a study in asymmetry: one wing extended in warning, the other dragging on the ground; one arm clutched against his chest, the other braced against his knee for balance as he watched his Enemy turn towards him. His eyes narrowed.

Crowley approached warily, the iron bar in one hand. There was no way Aziraphale was going to listen to reason; the angel had passed _way_ beyond that and was now focused entirely on survival, and he saw Crowley not as his friend but as his Adversary. He would kill Crowley if he could.

Aziraphale snarled another Word, which Crowley sidestepped, and Aziraphale shrieked and lunged, off-balance but still very dangerous. Crowley stepped to meet him, _careful, careful, time it, don't miss_—

You can make a lot of different noises with an iron bar. Hit it against another metal bar and it says _spang_, tap it on a brick and it says _tink_. Iron and PVC make a delightfully sharp whumping noise when struck together. The noise that iron makes when it hits an angel's left temple at high velocity sounds something like _whunch_.

Crowley breathed through his nose for a minute, enjoying the sudden silence. And then he set about bundling the angel into his car.

* * *

Aziraphale swam up through dreams of fire and red-tinged darkness and surfaced with a gasp, then winced when his ribs creaked. He sat up, being careful about his ribs, but they didn't protest again.

He was in the little-used room above his shop. Morning sun slanted gold through the curtains and spilled onto the floor, splashed across the faded quilt, and he half-smiled. He rarely used the first-floor flat above his shop, but he liked it well enough. The hardwood floor was old and dark, and bare but for a braid rug by the side of Aziraphale's bed, and none of the furniture was under two hundred years old (tightening the bed-ropes and changing the ticking every spring wasn't _that_ big a price to pay for comfort).

He stretched experimentally. He felt stiff, but the pain had dulled to a low ache, almost a memory, so he swung his legs down and put his feet on the floor and started to rise. One foot protested a little, but the skin was whole, the bones and tendons knit. Good.

"One of these days," he said into the quiet, "I shall have to stop going places while I'm not conscious." Because really, this was the second time he'd turned up in his shop with only a vague memory of how he'd come to be there, and it was getting ridiculous.

He stood fully, straightened, and frowned, trying to remember. _Blood, pain, drugs—_a _circle_, and he shuddered—slipping, dear God, _sliding_, and everything was fever-hot and there was a haze of smoke and his wings wouldn't work, then cold pavement beneath his hands, angry yellow eyes in a sharp face. _It's me, you dumb fuck! Wake up, you have to turn over, you're concussed. Come on, you have to drink something, blessit, what d'you think I bloody am, a bloody nurse?_

Aziraphale started to laugh. Two for two, he thought, and reeled in his wings and started to dress. _I have to find Crowley. Hopefully this time I won't have to deal with him kissing me_—

And his thoughts ground to a halt and he stopped dead, blinking. That was it, wasn't it? That was the bit he'd been trying to recall. There had been an Incident last time, he remembered _that_, but Crowley had been the one to initiate it. The first time, he'd had little choice, but the _second time_, that was just after Aziraphale had told him—

And it all fell into place. He almost laughed. He'd been so _dense_. _Well, that's all right, then._

He finished getting dressed, went downstairs, and there he found another surprise: three circles, hastily drawn but not a line out of place, names and dates correct, a burned and bloody feather in the middle, and the _Heptameron_ open on the floor beside it. And, on the desk, a bowl of what could only be holy water. It was accompanied by candles and chalk and something that smelled suspiciously of Mastic.

_What in Heaven?_

For a few minutes, Aziraphale stood like a stone, thinking, concentrating. He recognized the circles, of course; he knew better than anyone how to read them, how to draw them. He knew without consulting any reference that someone had opened a direct line to Heaven (_dies Mercurij_, hour of _Beron_, and Aziraphale was unsurprised), but these were human magics and he hadn't seen them in nearly five hundred years.

Someone had summoned Raphael. The technique laid out in the _Heptameron_ called up a host of angels, and while the circles on the floor were in the traditional layout, these had been designed for Raphael alone. That particular technique wasn't documented in any text Aziraphale knew of.

"Think," he said aloud. The last day he remembered was Saturday; he'd gone to the theater alone and had wanted to walk home. Okay. He'd started to walk home. Okay.

Next thing he remembered was waking up in some club full of pounding be-bop. A _disco_ of some sort, probably. And after that...after that, a rush of visions he didn't want to think about, followed by darkness. He remembered enough. He remembered Names, four of them. It was enough, and he nodded to himself.

It was a good place to start. The circle on the floor had been active on Wednesday evening—again, he was unsurprised. Raphael ruled Wednesday, and Aziraphale had been badly in need of a healer. So he'd spent at least three full days in the shop, almost totally unconscious, and today was…when? It didn't matter.

He briefly considered calling his superiors and asking what had happened, but decided against it—attention was the last thing he wanted to be calling to himself right now.

He took a deep breath and squared his shoulders. All right, then. The facts as he knew them were as followed: Crowley had found him, brought him home, kept him from dying until Wednesday. Then someone _other_ than Crowley had called down Raphael (Adam? Adam wouldn't need a circle. Besides, Aziraphale very much doubted the Antichrist was the type to do this sort of thing. Unidentified Third Party, then) and banished him again. Aziraphale had slept for another day or so, probably, and here he was.

He had questions, and he was going to get answers. There was the small matter of the people who had drugged him; he would have to take care of that before he did anything else. It wouldn't do for them to be allowed to leave.

That they might have already returned home did not occur to Aziraphale. He knew how demons thought. These would remain on earth until their poison had run its course, and then report their success to their superiors. He grinned, eyes like flint. _Foolish. Oh, very, very foolish_.

No time to waste, then. He had to catch them before they caught on that they were being hunted or that he was uninjured. Aziraphale didn't anticipate any problems; he was _good_ at hunting demons, and he had made very sure when they'd laid hands on him that he would be at least a step ahead. Hard little smile still in place, he took a file and, very carefully, began to clean his nails.


	8. Chapter 8

Last chapter! I'm sorry it was so long coming - trying to keep them both sufficiently in character and still stick to the situation was…problematic? Because as much as I wanted Crowley to be the one to call down Raphael, the process involves holy water and sanctifications and holy incense and angelic sigils and a priest who has fasted for three days and is wearing special vestments, and let's face it, that stuff would _kill_ Crowley. (I kid you not; the _Heptameron_ is a real book and it tells you how to draw circles to call down angels.)

The second half of this chapter is weird because I was trying to keep this in Crowley's point of view, so Aziraphale's thought process isn't exactly obvious. He's also still a little bit drugged.

Anyway. There will be a follow-up story. I've already got it partially written (I had it already partially written before I wrote the first chapter of _this_ thing; this was actually backstory to my explanation of why Aziraphale hates pills) but I don't know when I'll put it up. I've got a couple other one-shots I'd like to put up first. So. This is the last chapter of _The Meaning of Life Is_ and I hope you like it! Thank you to everyone who reviewed!

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**Chapter 8**

The problem with entrusting duties to _other people_, Crowley thought, was that you were never sure if it was done right until it was already finished, and who knew when that would be. Friday night was fast approaching—the sun was almost completely set—and the cardinal had left the shop very early on Thursday morning, and still no word from Aziraphale. Crowley wanted to go and see if everything was as he'd left it, but he'd seen the cardinal bless the shop as he'd left and it had made him think.

A blessing from a human, even one pious enough to summon angels without a hitch, was ordinarily no trouble for Crowley (it usually just made him itch), but he strongly suspected that Above was also keeping a close eye on the shop, and he _really_ didn't want them on his tail. So Aziraphale trusted Michael; that was well and good, but Crowley did not, and even the Sword of God couldn't hold back the host. Not to mention that Aziraphale was probably still on thin ice from the whole apocalypse fiasco. Crowley was.

Well, Crowley had put a ward on the door when he had left the shop so that he'd know when Aziraphale opened it. That would have to do.

He gritted his teeth and resumed his abuse of the VCR. He wasn't going to use it; it was, after all, woefully behind the times, but Aziraphale hadn't known that (of course), and had given it to Crowley as a challenge. It was infernally designed, and had resisted his threats thus far. He'd just gotten into his stride when someone buzzed the door.

He ignored it in favor of acquainting the VCR with a cast-iron skillet, but the door buzzed again, longer this time, and he jumped and lost his tenuous hold on the machine. He briefly considered starting over, but then the door buzzed a third time, and this time the noise didn't stop. Whoever was out there was hanging on the bell, and Crowley swore and stalked across his flat. He walked over the coffee table to do so; it was not in his nature to go _around_.

"What," he snarled as he flung the door open, and then his brain shuddered to a halt because what the _fuck_.

Aziraphale shuffled his armful of mason jars around, then held out a piece of paper. "The next time your people contact you, please inform them of the deaths of these four. My condolences, if you knew them."

Crowley took it, looked at the names, looked back to Aziraphale. The angel was grim.

"May I come in? Thank you." He brushed past Crowley without waiting for an answer and put the jars on the coffee table, then fell into the corner of the white sofa and closed his eyes.

The demon let the door slam, folded his arms over his chest. "You look well." He was lying. Aziraphale looked far from well, but at least he looked _better_.

"Thanks to you, I think."

Crowley's lip curled, and Aziraphale sighed and looked at him.

"So, to what do I owe the pleasure?"

Aziraphale ignored him. "Is there any way to find out if the demons on that list made contact with Hell during the past week?" His voice was cool.

"None that I know of. Ask them."

Aziraphale smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes. "Oh, I did. I _insisted_ that they tell me, repeatedly, but you know how skilled _demons_ are at hiding things, so I thought I would ask you. And I do apologize for barging in on you like this," he added, before Crowley could react to what had sounded like a rather pointed insult, "they were watching the shop pretty closely; I couldn't use the shop door. I enjoyed your ward, though. I almost tripped over it when I was bringing them in. Thank you for that."

"Watching," Crowley repeated, deciding (with difficulty) to ignore the sarcasm and the jab about demons, "What d'you mean, _watching_."

"I imagine they threw me into that alley and then waited to see what would happen. I doubt they expected you to turn up." He paused. "_I_ certainly didn't expect you to come. How did you find me?"

"In pretty bad shape," said Crowley, dodging the real question. Demons, he thought. Of course. That explained a lot. "They're dead, then?"

"Almost, I should think." Aziraphale glanced at the jars on the table. They contained some sort of greyish sludge Crowley hadn't seen before, and he reached for one, but Aziraphale snapped, "Don't!"

"Why, what's in it?"

"Holy water."

Crowley snorted. The stuff in the jars didn't look like any water he'd ever seen, and it certainly wasn't holy. But he didn't try to touch them again. "Bullshit."

Aziraphale shrugged delicately. "_Mostly_ holy water," he amended, picking one up and sloshing it gently from side to side. The sludge fizzed for a second before going clear, and Aziraphale raised his eyebrows. "Interesting."

Crowley looked from the three remaining jars on the table to the one in Aziraphale's hand to his face. The angel's eyes were still cold and hard, and the lines around his mouth had tightened. Crowley pointed at the jars. "Are those what I think they are?"

Aziraphale set the jar back down with a _tik_, folded his hands in his lap. He'd cleaned up, Crowley noticed; there had been blood under his nails before. "Probably."

Crowley nodded slowly, trying not to think about it, trying not to remember the angelic capacity for vengeful cruelty. Not that he blamed Aziraphale. He would have done the same thing, if it had been him. "You've taken care of them, then."

"One of four." He glanced up. Another of the jars went clear, like a sigh of defeat. "Two, now. I think this makes us even, don't you?"

"Fair enough," said Crowley, and sat down on the other end of the sofa, staring at the jars. There was a pause. "You could have left _one_ for me," he muttered eventually, as the last one fizzed, and Aziraphale finally burst out laughing. The relief of tension in the room was almost tangible. Crowley breathed.

As on edge as Aziraphale had been before, he had just relaxed an equal amount. His pupils were dilated. "My dear, their offense was against me, not you. And if I'd contacted you, they would have known and popped back down to Hell and told everyone about—what you did for me."

"I didn't do it for_ you_," said Crowley, dangerously low, but he saw the way Aziraphale was looking at him and wanted to be drunk. He wanted to be _very_ drunk.

Aziraphale had been wound tight, too tight, and if you wind a thing tight enough, it sticks. But if the tension snaps away, _suddenly_, like a bowstring after the arrow is released, then all of the clock-springs come loose, and explode everywhere.

"I remembered," Aziraphale told him, and his words were very slightly slurred. "I remembered what I couldn't, before. About three years ago."

"Shut it. I don't want to hear it."

"I'm not surprised." The angel's voice was quiet, his eyes unfocused. "If I were in your position, I wouldn't either. But if you were in _my_ position, you'd say it anyway."

"I flatter myself I would _not_, and don't you _dare_—"

"Love you too."

Crowley was on his feet. He wasn't sure when exactly that had happened, or when his hands had balled into fists, but his claws bit into his palms and he felt blood well around them. "You—you bloody_ angel_—that was low, that wasss bloody—what are you implying, here?" The words were disappointing, stammered, their vehemence nowhere near what he _wanted_ to convey, but he was beyond the point where he could articulate. There were no words. There were no _words_. And Aziraphale wasn't backing down.

"I'm not _implying_ anything, Crowley, I am _saying_," and he was.

Crowley let out an inarticulate snarl and turned away, more furious than he had been in centuries. Aziraphale had _no right_. Okay, the angel was on edge and exhausted and not even close to being in his right mind, but _that was no excuse_. "Fuck you," he hissed. It was horrifyingly inadequate.

"You'd like to!"

Crowley spun, claws out, astonished and livid. "_What did you say?_"

Aziraphale was standing now, too, head up and shoulders square and eyes sparking grey fire. "I said you'd like to fuck me," Aziraphale snapped. "And as long as _one of us_ is being honest, I'll admit I wouldn't mind."

When Crowley only stared at him, shocked expression frozen in place, Aziraphale sighed and slumped a little, folded his arms over his chest. "You always insist on going in _circles_, don't you?" he said tiredly. "You're bleeding on the carpet."

Crowley glared and wiped his bloody palms on the couch just to make Aziraphale twitch. _I will not talk about this_, he thought, _I will not. I refuse_.

So, for a while, he and Aziraphale simply _looked_ at each other, Crowley glaring, Aziraphale slowly glazing over until he finally just sat down heavily. "Look," he said. "Look. I don't care. I'm sorry, all right? Forget I said anything."

Crowley relaxed slightly.

Besides, talk was cheap. A picture was worth a thousand words, but an _action_ was worth a thousand pictures, and so he reluctantly moved forward and sat down, too. There was nothing to say, as far as he was concerned.

He hadn't even realized that the silence stretching between them was awkward until Aziraphale said, obviously flustered, "I really _am_ sorry, I didn't mean, I didn't think. I. I only just woke up this morning, you know, and I killed four—people—today, I had to hunt them down first and maintain wards, and. And circles, and words of power, and that kind of job would be taxing even if I were at full strength. And my head feels like-it's full of _fuzz_, and I'm not really thinking, I think. If you take my meaning."

Crowley turned slowly, pushing his anger away. "Course your head is weird. You're still getting those drugs out of your system."

"Crowley, I just as good as said—oh, for_get_ what I said—and I called you a demon earlier."

"I _am_ a demon," Crowley pointed out. Aziraphale really did look miserable.

"But I didn't _mean_ it."

"Don't start. Don't. I've had enough of you _starting_. Here," Crowley said, and handed the angel a flask. "Drink."

"Did you really beat me over the head with a club," said Aziraphale dully, and drank. "You may need to do it again. I can't believe—" He stopped.

Crowley snorted and took the flask back, drank deeply, re-capped it. "Yeah, I did, and if I ever see you like that again it'll be too soon." He stood. "Come on, up you get."

Aziraphale looked up at him.

"You've forgotten," said Crowley, "how long I've known you. One of these years you're going to need to sleep in your own bloody bed, but for now you'll just have to stay in mine, and I know you won't go to sleep unless I _make_ you. So come on." He pulled Aziraphale to his feet.

"But—I said—"

Crowley rolled his eyes. "You're out of your mind."

But when he had finally got Aziraphale to shut up and lie down, he moved over, _close_. He said nothing, only huddled in close against the other warm body and felt Aziraphale's slow breathing stop for a moment. "Crowley?"

"Shut _up_," Crowley growled, eyes tightly closed. "Go to _sleep_."

Aziraphale was quiet for a long time, and Crowley was almost all the way asleep when he felt a warm arm curl around his waist. He nodded grimly to himself, and tried not to enjoy it.

**End**


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